page_title: BMW
section_title: Logo
hierarchical_section_title: BMW / Branding / Logo
caption_attribution_description: Obvious candidate, really. Took ages to get the sun's reflection just so...
context_page_description: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, commonly referred to as BMW, is a German multinational company which produces luxury vehicles and motorcycles. The company was founded in 1916 as a manufacturer of aircraft engines, which it produced from 1917 until 1918 and again from 1933 to 1945.
  Automobiles are marketed under the brands BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce, and motorcycles are marketed under the brand BMW Motorrad. In 2015, BMW was the world's twelfth-largest producer of motor vehicles, with 2,279,503 vehicles produced. The company has significant motorsport history, especially in touring cars, Formula 1, sports cars and the Isle of Man TT.
  BMW is headquartered in Munich and produces motor vehicles in Germany, Brazil, China, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Mexico. The Quandt family are long-term shareholders of the company, following brothers Herbert Quandt and Harald Quandt's investments in 1959 which saved the company from bankruptcy.
context_section_description: The circular blue and white BMW logo or roundel evolved from the circular Rapp Motorenwerke company logo, which featured a black ring bearing the company name surrounding the company logo, on a plinth a horse's head couped.
  BMW retained Rapp's black ring inscribed with the company name, but adopted as the central element a circular escutcheon bearing a quasi-heraldic reference to the coat of arms (and flag) of the Free State of Bavaria (as the state of their origin was named after 1918), being the arms of the House of Wittelsbach, Dukes and Kings of Bavaria. However as the local law regarding trademarks forbade the use of state coats of arms or other symbols of sovereignty on commercial logos, the design was sufficiently differentiated to comply, but retained the tinctures azure (blue) and argent (white).
  The current iteration of the logo was introduced in 2020, removing 3D effects that had been used in renderings of the logo, and also removing the black outline encircling the rondel. The logo will be used on BMW's branding but will not be used on vehicles.
  The origin of the logo as a portrayal of the movement of an aircraft propeller, the BMW logo with the white blades seeming to cut through a blue sky, is a myth which sprang from a 1929 BMW advertisement depicting the BMW emblem overlaid on a rotating propeller, with the quarters defined by strobe-light effect, a promotion of an aircraft engine then being built by BMW under license from Pratt & Whitney. "For a long time, BMW made little effort to correct the myth that the BMW badge is a propeller"
  (quote by Fred Jakobs, Archive Director, BMW Group Classic). It is well established that this propellor portrayal was first used in a BMW advertisement in 1929 – twelve years after the logo was created – so this is not the true origin of the logo.
caption: The above logo on a BMW car
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